Trinity Blood: To Bleed Away
by Yuhi Sakura
Summary: Called upon by the Empire to assist in a rescue mission, Abel and Sakura quickly find themselves immersed in death and decay. Hunted by the foul, unnatural things spawning from vampires and humans alike and haunted by the darkness of their own minds, they fight to maintain their sanity and the lives of the remaining crew. The past and the potential dark future collide explosively.
1. Prologue: The Aurora

_**Prologue: The **_**Aurora **

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Trinity Blood, or Dead Space. There are a select few original characters in here, however, that are mine, such as the Commander. **_

"Report." The tall Methuselah commanded sternly as she walked onto the bridge. Her long black hair, fixed in a neat ponytail of curls, fell to her waist and was a sharp contrast to the otherwise clean lines of her body. Metallic blue eyes shone from beneath the heavy, dark fringe of bangs.

She wore her uniform in the style of the Empire: the fabric sheath of her dress was a rich blue from which flowered a compass of metal lattice work in silver. The long sleeves were puffed around the shoulders, adorned intricately with sapphire and silver lace, and ended in a metal bell around her wrist. The neckline rode on her breasts and was bordered with white lattice. The tights she wore beneath them were a silky dove grey, as were the high boots that tapered to her thighs.

"Yes, Ma'am." Her subordinate replied, pulling up several graphics onto the main monitors.

"Tap me into central command." She commanded, folding her hands neatly in her lap as she took her seat.

A moment later her ensign piped up, "You're patched through."

"Beta ship: are the facilities prepared?"

The response was quick: "Yes, Ma'am. Primary and secondary systems are operating at peak efficiency. All life support systems are online."

"Gamma ship: What are the findings on the samples you obtained?"

"Very good, Ma'am." A female replied over the com-system, "I believe our Mother Empress will be most pleased."

"Excellent." Commander Chandrakantar Sarala responded before redirecting her attention, "Delta, Epsilon ships: are you prepared to board?"

"Affirmative, Ma'am." A third voice chimed in.

"Prepare to dock." The Commander said as she motioned for a view-screen to be pulled up.

Photons flickered in a colorful haze in front of her for a moment before condensing into the image of her two ships pulling down onto the carefully constructed locking harbors. From the two central docking bays, a complex web of tunnels, domes, and buildings spread out across the dwarf planet's surface. Strategically planted in the rich earth were dozens of drilling hubs, set to bring the planet's bounty aboard her ships.

"When will we be prepared to bring the minerals aboard?" She asked, crossing her hands behind the small of her back.

"In sixteen hours, Ma'am."

"Excellent. Begin the extraction process." Commander Chandrakanta told her as she took her seat on the bridge.

Her subordinate nodded and began relaying messages across the digital com-links. A series of reassuring beeps filled the cockpit for a moment before a comfortable silence set in. It was followed shortly be a response from the ground team that they were confirming orders and beginning the drilling process.

Slowly, loads of valuable minerals like platinum and gold would be loaded from the drilling bases, erected some weeks previously, onto the mechanized lifts and into the underbelly of the _Aurora_. All of it the result of twenty-five years of hard work.

The mission had taken almost eight years to construct and plan and a little under a decade to meet with the Council and Empress' approval. What followed were seven tedious years of hand-selecting and training the crews that were now operating under her command. All of it for the good of the Empire, the honor of her house, for the joy of her Mother… Literally billions of Empiric dollars had been funneled into the project, with expected returns in the trillions.

And even allowing for that, the results were optimistic: Given that so much of the Empire's technology relied on a precious few metals that were scarce on Earth, it only made sense to look elsewhere for them; but they had never honestly expected to pull up the sheer volume that they were projected to.

* * *

><p>Day Three<p>

"Report." She stated simply as she stepped into the bridge.

"Things are going wonderfully, Ma'am." Her ensign responded. "We've loaded almost a metric ton of platinum as of 0100 hours."

The Commander nodded as she pulled a small computer into her hands and pulled up the preliminaries on the data streaming in from the numerous crews.

"Surprising purity." She remarked to herself as she sat the device down.

"There was a small incident this morning, Ma'am." Someone finally remarked.

"I do believe I ordered that I was to be informed immediately of any and all set-backs." She said, her eyes sharp.

"Our apologies, Ma'am." The ensign replied, "We didn't believe it to be a threat to our productivity."

"Regardless," Chandrakantar responded, "I expect to be briefed in full the next time. Now, what sort of incident was this?"

"One of the privates responsible for monitoring the loading committed suicide at 1149 hours."

She sighed to herself, though it wasn't unheard of for even the most rigorously trained crews to have a few members who didn't have the psychological fortitude to deal with the vast emptiness of space. Colloquially, it was referred to as cabin fever. It was hardly unexpected, even if it was unpleasant.

"I'll read the autopsy report this evening and prepare to inform the family."

It would have to wait until after their mission concluded in several months. Very few people were privy to the existence of the operation at all. That information would be released if-_when_, she told herself privately-the mission proved successful.

"Keep me updated." She said simply as she rose and passed through the automatic doors again.

* * *

><p>"Lieutenant Aeton?"<p>

The normally keen man stared back at the red-headed Private blankly. He was unusually pale, and she wondered if the long hours on the drilling platforms were getting to him.

"Sir?"

"Make us whole again." He replied automatically.

"I don't understand, Sir." She said.

He didn't seem to hear her; he turned to face the drill and stepped into the rotating blade.

Her scream was cut short by the blood spatter of ripped flesh against her skin.

* * *

><p>Day Five<p>

Her intercom buzzed and she rolled over automatically in her bed and snapped the piece into her ear.

"This is the Commander Sarala."

"I apologize for the interruption, Commander," Ensign Zenia replied, "There was an incident at 0300 hours."

Chandrakantar glanced at the small digital clock glowing in the darkness of her room. It read as 0317.

"What was the nature of the incident?" She asked.

"Lieutenant Aeton, who was commanding the third drilling platform, apparently committed suicide."

The Commander frowned. Though "cabin fever" was expected in the lower ranks, it was almost unheard of from the rank of Master Sergeant up. The training regiment simply didn't allow for that psychological tendency.

"Private Amara witnessed the event and is currently being held in the medical bay."

"For what?" The Commander replied.

"Hysteria. It seems she had a break with reality. Moreover, Doctor Sanvali is requesting your presence in the medical bay at your first convenience."

"Inform her that I'm on my way now." She responded as she clicked off the net.

* * *

><p>Doctor Yamika Sanvali hovered over the screaming young woman, trying in vain to measure the response of her pupils with the small flashlight clutched between her slender fingers. Even restrained, she was simply thrashing too hard.<p>

"We're going to have to sedate her," She finally told her nurse as she drew back from the table and pulled her latex gloves off. "If she continues like this, she's going to lacerate her wrists and ankles."

"Shall I prepare an injection of Ativan?" The pretty young blonde replied.

Normally, her nurse would have been correct. But the patient was doing too much harm to herself to risk waiting on the slow acting Ativan. "Best make it Midazolam."

"Understood."

The nurse faded into the background just as the bay doors opened to reveal the Commander.

"Doctor Sanvali." She bowed her head in greeting.

"Commander." The doctor mirrored the movement, "Thank you for coming."

"What seems to be the problem?"

"I'm growing concerned for the well-being of several of the crews." She said pulling up a screen full of statistics that were routed directly from tiny electronic sensors in the uniforms of the crews. The sensors recorded heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and brain waves. "Their stress levels are unusually high, and their sleep patterns are abnormal."

"I'll have operations slowed immediately." The Commander reassured her.

* * *

><p>Day Seven<p>

In the privacy of her quarters, her hands shook and she could feel the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up as her eyes flickered across the screen. Twenty suicides, thirty-four assaults, six rapes, nineteen murders and more than forty people confined to the infirmaries.

The effort of merely keeping the life support systems functional was draining her already understaffed and highly stressed staff. And more and more people were collapsing, muttering unintelligibly, drowning in the voices in their dark minds…

Her throat was dry as she lifted a small recorder to her lips and spoke.

"This is the Empiric _Aurora_ in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, requesting immediate assistance. Repeat: This is the Empiric _Aurora _requesting immediate assistance."

TBC


	2. Chapter 1: Heed the Call

_**Chapter One: Heed the Call**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Trinity Blood, or Dead Space. There are a select few original characters in here, however, that are mine, such as the Commander. **_

"Coffee, Sister?"

"Uh…what?" She replied groggily, rubbing her eyes.

The Professor just smiled as he pressed the cup into her hands.

"I _am_ sorry to wake all of you so late." Kate said, appearing with the familiar hum of charged photons.

Sakura nodded, bringing the cup up to her lips. Admittedly, Kate's order _had_ come at an odd hour, even by AX standards…Either way, it didn't really matter now that they were seated in the conference room adjacent to the Duchess of Milan's office. Through the massive double doors on the far side of the room, she could hear the shuffle of papers and Tres' heavy, mechanical footsteps.

"It's alright, Kate." The Professor smiled.

Sakura could only think disjointedly that if it weren't for her sleep-hazed mind that she might find the image of the normally composed Albion knight amusing. He was quite the sight in a long night shift that fell to his knees with a pair of fluffy white slippers and a long hat with a tiny tousle that hung against his left ear. But what really made it funny was his expression: his eyes were serious, his hand on his chin in deep thought, and his lips pressed against his pipe.

"This had better be a damned emergency." Leon grumbled as he threw open the heavy wooden doors and stalked into the room.

"You will compose yourself, Father Leon," Kate snapped, "Before the Duchess briefs us."

"Now, now," Abel's voice had the hum of a smile in it, "Let's play nicely with each other."

"Indeed," Caterina remarked as she floated into the room.

The normally composed blonde Cardinal was about as disheveled as her operatives; her blonde hair, normally arranged in neat rings that cascaded down her back, was pulled into a sloppy bun that barely held itself together at the base of her neck. She was wrapped in a night shift that fell to the floor with a robe thrown over her shoulders for modesty. Without the bulk of her clerical robes, she looked almost fragile. The effect was only enhanced by the strain written across her face.

"I apologize for summoning all of you so suddenly, but as of this morning we are on the brink of warfare."

"What the hell?" Leon demanded gruffly.

"What exactly is the situation?" Hugh asked demurely.

"At 0013 hours this morning, the Vatican received a transmission from the Empire regarding an SOS one of their planetary mining vessels sent at approximately 2236 hours last night, Earth-time." Kate replied, a photon screen dropping down in front of her.

An auditory line blipped to life in the static black and white background; it started to crest and dip, the sound harsh.

"When it was cleaned up, this is what we got." Kate continued.

The static hiss faded back and fragments of words began to float to the surface.

"Au…ra…S…O…Bio…con…S.S._ Aurora_…SOS…"

"It's clearly a distress signal…" The Professor mused, his hand on his chin, "What did the Empire have to say?"

"The signal matches the Empiric _S.S. Aurora_, which is mining precious metals in a neighboring galaxy: The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. Approximately one quarter of a light year from the outer edges of the Milky Way."

"Who sent the distress signal?" Sakura asked.

"The Minister of Mineral and Metal Resources, Lady Chandrakantar Sarala, the Duchess of Adana." Caterina told her.

"And where are they now?"

"And why does this pertain to us?" Monica asked viciously, scanning her long crimson nails as she phased through the heavy double doors.

Sakura's eyes shifted as Tres moved in front of his Lady, his hand on his Jericho. But even without Tres' silent proof, the kunoichi could tell the dark female was dangerous. She might have worn the mark of an AX member, but the pink-haired Crusnik could feel her bloodlust when her dark eyes flitted over to Caterina.

"Originally, this distress signal was intended to reach only the Empire, but the refraction ratios weren't properly calibrated, and as it passed through Earth's atmosphere the signal distorted and scattered. The Empire, the Vatican _and _Albion have all received this message." Caterina continued, completely unfazed, her eyes sharp and icy.

"Meaning the Inquisition has their hands on it…" Sakura trailed off, seeing the pressing issue immediately.

"Precisely. I contacted the Empire immediately via satellite video conference, and it was agree it was in our best interests to present a strong front. It took some hours of arguing, but I managed to convince the Council that it was in our best interests to aid them. The Inquisition is conducting a stand-alone investigation under the assumption the _Aurora is_ a satellite threat to the Vatican, though they are unwilling to move just yet." Caterina said, lifting the cup clutched in her hand to her lips.

Abel breathed a sigh of relief. He may have had some misguided convictions, but Brother Orcini wasn't as eager for open war as his former superior, Cardinal Di Medici, had been.

"I've obtained Papal permission to deploy my agents immediately, with Empiric cooperation from The Duchess of Kiev and the Earl of Memphis. I cannot stress this enough: The Papal Council is prepared to go to war at a moment's notice. This mission _must_ succeed, AX."

"Well, where the hell are we headed to, then?" Leon grumbled.

"Queen Esther has graciously offered her support as neutral territory. In Albion, the Inquisition holds no jurisdiction. The Empire will be docking a ship capable of intergalactic travel there in six hours time. In eight hours time, the AX and the Empiric emissaries will convene to be briefed by Virgil Walsh."

"You won't be accompanying us to Albion, My Lady?" The Professor asked.

"Unfortunately, I won't be able to, though I have full faith in your abilities." She replied.

"You plan to use yourself as collateral?" The Professor asked.

"I don't intend to, I _am _collateral." The Duchess responded.

"Lady Caterina, allow me to accompany you…" Tres began.

"No, Father Iqus. Your concern is noted, but I need my team in the field. I trust that you will succeed."

The temperature in the room dropped; Caterina's word was absolute, no matter how gently it was spoken. Still, though, it was difficult to accept the idea that she would be left to fend for herself…

"It appears as though it's settled, then." Abel smiled, "Now, what sort of team will we need?"

"We need to cover all our bases." Sakura replied.

"Naturally, Kate will function as our field coordinator," The Professor began, his hand on his chin, "I think Abel should be our ambassador, given his connections to the Empire. I believe Tres, Hugue, and Leon should be our figurative guard. I think Monica would best be suited to the collection of more sensitive data. I want Sakura and myself to take control of medical matters."

"Affirmative. Statistical figures concur with your original division of resources, abilities, and labor." The android responded.

"Excellent," Caterina responded, setting her cup down gently, "AX, prepare to deploy."

TBC


	3. Chapter 2: Evening Star: The Neferet

_**Chapter Two: Evening Star-The **_**S.S. Neferet**

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Trinity Blood or Dead Space, though certain characters, such as the Commander, are my creation. **_

If there was one thing that could be said for Esther, it was her practicality. There were no sugary-sweet greetings or unnecessary formalities. They arrived in the British kingdom and were promptly ushered into a Council room under the protective cover of had already taken her place at the head of the massive table that was centered in the room, and was clearing reviewing the last details of the brief with Virgil as the AX team and Empiric emissaries took their seats.

"Greetings," Virgil began, shuffling papers as a screen pulled down behind him and the light dimmed, "I trust that we can do away with formalities for the moment."

There was a quiet murmur of assent and he nodded once as he stepped to the right and began to speak.

"At 2236 Earth-hours ago on Thursday evening, the Empiric _S.S. Aurora_ transmitted a distress signal that was received at 0013 hours on Friday morning. After extensive audio recalibrating, it has been determined that the sender of the message was the Duchess of Adana and Minister of Mineral and Metal Resources, Chandrakantar Sarala."

The screen flickered to life with two different colored lines, one representing the SOS and another representing a voice profile for the Commander. They were nearly identical in wavelength and pitch.

"As of an hour and fifteen minutes ago, the Empire has relayed back to us that the _S.S. Aurora_ is currently transmitting from the surface of the dwarf planet Arishana. They are currently transmitting on all emergency frequencies, though interference from the planet's magnetic field and Earth's atmosphere have distorted the messages beyond our ability to complete restore."

"Your report states that you managed to re-establish certain fragments. Have you teased any information from them?" The Professor asked thoughtfully.

"Unfortunately not." Virgil responded as another image flickered to life behind him.

Sure enough, the word fragments were too short or too confused to even be hypothesized about. It was frustrating…and unnerving.

"What preparations have been made thus far?" Ion asked.

"At this moment, Empiric forces are docking the _S.S. Neferet_ and preparing to remodel the software systems. In four hours time, your field coordinator's program will be uploaded and jacked into the interfaces. Two special operative teams will remain on-board as essential personal, but all other positions will be vacated." The blond Methuselah responded.

"And our total manpower will be?" Sakura inquired.

"Fifty heads, including Kate Scott."

"What are our total capabilities?" Hugh asked, glancing up from the thick sheath of reports.

"The _S.S. Neferet _is fully equipped and armed. Its exact specifications can be found on page fifty-six." He said, "But, in brief, you have a complete array of weaponry, the capability of any hospital with a fully stocked medical bay, and enough provisions to last you up to six months."

"Impressive." The Professor mused.

"We have given you every advantage." Virgil assured them.

"Because we won't have the option of calling in for supply drops or beta teams…" Sakura trailed off quietly.

"Precisely." Virgil responded, his voice dropping away.

"I _hate _to disturb this heavy moment," Monica pouted seductively, "But I believe we have other issues to cover. If we detain any enemy, what protocol are we to follow?"

"You are to return them to Earth for questioning, if at all possible." Virgil responded.

The Professor shot the woman a look Sakura couldn't quite discern before he directed his attention to Virgil, "When can we begin loading?"

"In two hours." The Methuselah replied.

"Anything else from the peanut gallery?" Leon asked, scratching absently at his ear.

"I believe we've covered everything." The Professor said.

"If you have any further questions regarding the _Neferet,_ her crew can answer them." Virgil said with a certain finality in his voice.

"Good luck, everyone. We'll be waiting for your first transmission." Esther said.

With that, the Queen and her aid bowed and exited the room. No doubt to finish preparations on their end.

"Let's follow suit." The Professor smiled as he rose from his chair.

"Affirmative." Tres replied, his footsteps mechanical and smooth.

"I suppose anything has to be better than this dull conference." Monica smirked as she waved back at them, disappearing through a nearby wall.

Sakura managed to hold her tongue until the rest of the group had cleared out, leaving just her and Abel in the quiet, dark room.

"I really wish she wouldn't do that…" The pink-haired woman sighed. Monica seemed like a political firestorm waiting to happen: She certainly seemed like a spy working for the AX with the way she flippantly phased in between rooms, with no respect or consideration for sensitive information, or even just the privacy of the individual occupying the room.

"I know she seems like a liability, but she's leashed tightly." Abel responded. "That necklace around her throat is actually a device triggered to explode if she wanders to close to Caterina or overshoots her jurisdiction."

"That seems a bit extreme…" Sakura dead-panned.

"It is a rather complicated story…" Abel replied with a good-natured tilt of his head and goofy smile.

"Save it for another time." She smiled back as she stood up, "We have work to do."

* * *

><p>"It's…massive…" Sakura breathed, staring in awe at the sleek metal frame of the <em>Neferet. <em>

Comprised of three central compartments linked with massive bridges, the ship easily took up the main airstrip of Albion. Running almost three thousand two hundred feet from stern to bow, it was almost two miles across at its widest. There were thousands of ports for armaments, hundreds of observation hubs, and enough cargo space to load the _Iron Maiden II_ several dozen times over.

"How can fifty people run this?" She asked, suddenly nervous.

"I know it looks intimidating, but its design isn't that different from _Iron Maiden II._" The Professor told her.

"Is someone getting cold feet already?" The voice was dark, sexy, and dangerous.

A slender arm slithered around her, pulling her close to a round chest. Sakura's breath hitched in her throat as Monica's full lips released a warm puff of air.

"Monica." The Professor's voice was tight, "I do believe you have a separate meeting you are supposed to be in right now."

"Wouldn't you rather be with me in a _separate_ meeting?" She asked as she un-twined herself from Sakura and sauntered over to the Albion gentleman.

"Go along now, Sister. We can't be delayed more than necessary." He said smoothly.

The assassin turned unwilling AX agent seemed to find the entire exchange amusing. Her mouth pulled up in something of a smile and she chuckled throatily, "I'll do my best to behave, then."

The Professor watched her phase away before turning to the pink-haired kunoichi, "I apologize for her. She has…a unique sense of humor. It's best not to pay her any mind."

Sakura nodded, forcing the worried frown from her face, "I should get going, too, Professor. I still need to inventory the medical bay."

"If you don't mind, I'll join you. I'd like to see for myself what capabilities we have."

"It would be a pleasure." The kunoichi smiled.

* * *

><p>Sakura glanced down once more at her checklist and smiled to herself as she turned to the Professor, "Virgil wasn't exaggerating. We really are fully stocked."<p>

"Excellent." The Albion knight replied.

"How is the digital interface looking?"

"The system is surprisingly malleable. Kate should be online in under an hour."

"Do you think interference will be an issue?"

"I highly doubt it. She's operating from within the electrical matrix here with her back-ups linked both to earth and to several mainframes onboard." He assured her.

She opened her mouth to comment on his forethought when Leon suddenly buzzed in on the intercom.

"You two should see the toys they've got hanging around."

"I'll take it you found the armory." Abel said, his voice hinting at the smile that was no doubt on his face.

Sakura tapped off of the line with a small smile and a sigh before the conversation could continue. As much as she enjoyed their banter, she didn't have time for it.

* * *

><p>Hugue was hardly bothered by the vastness of the ship, or the prospect of space. He preferred to be alone, whether it was in his own thoughts or in the solitude of the physical world. This mission, he felt, would test him not mentally, but in his physical capabilities.<p>

He glanced down once at his hand and flexed it into a fist, testing his strength. He held himself there for a moment, breathing deeply, before he shrugged off his heavy cloak and jacket and set to work on his push-ups.

* * *

><p>Tres stood quietly by, his eyes shining a faint red from beneath the heavy fringe of brown hair. Within the complex matrix of his mind, he was processing millions of observations and running thousands of scenarios.<p>

Eventually, he knew, he would have to go offline to recharge and synchronize with Kate's latest upgrades, but for the moment he had the luxury of the comforting whir of gears and his thoughts.

* * *

><p>Abel stared out through one of the small window ports in the ship, lost in his thoughts. It had been almost a century since he had seen Earth from the dark velvet of space. So many memories, he thought quietly to himself, so much joy and so much pain…<p>

He tried to remember what Mars looked like. Looking back, he knew that he once found the color and dusky twilight of it beautiful…but Lilith's death had tainted even that, and now when he thought about the red planet hanging in its own orbit, he imagined only the color of old blood being flaked from dry skin…

It all rushed back suddenly-how glassy and blue and clean Earth had looked…and how he had painted that canvas black and brown and red with the ashes of billions of humans, the toxic radiation of nuclear weapons, the smoke of the millions of fires he set…

His stomach churned painfully. Bile rushed into his throat and he felt the blood leave his face…

"Abel?"

He started, alarmed by even Kate's gentle voice.

"I'm sorry, Father," She said quickly, "I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's alright, Kate," He replied, "How are you settling in?"

"It's a tad roomier than _Iron Maiden_, but I'm managing. You, Father?"

"Just fine." He told her as he forced a smile.

"I came to tell you that we're preparing to make way."

"How time flies…" He mused to himself.

"It does…" She trailed off, "Excuse me, Father, while I inform the others."

"Of course." He waved at her, watching as she dissolved into a spray of photons that swirled and disappeared into thin air.

He waited a long moment to be sure that he was alone before he allowed himself to look back through the window at the ground that would all too soon fade away from them and open into the yawning black.

TBC


	4. Chapter 3: Reaper Chill

_**Chapter Three: Reaper Chill**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Trinity Blood, or Dead Space, though a select few characters, such as the Commander, are my own creation. **_

"Good…morning, I suppose." Sakura said, pausing to glance at a digital clock and confirm that it was, indeed, morning. Without the sun to regulate her internal clock, she found herself waking and falling asleep at odd hours. And, from the haphazard look of her team, so were the rest of them.

The Professor nodded at her from over the rim of his coffee cup. Spread out in front of him were no less than five other mugs and what looked to be several hundred pages of reports.

"Good morning, Astha!" Abel suddenly piped up cheerfully, directing his wintry blue gaze at the door.

"I really am loathe to be seen so improperly attired." The Duchess responded dryly with a withering gaze down at the tight tank and shorts she was wearing.

"You couldn't possibly make this trip in that stuffy Empire uniform." The silver-haired priest replied.

"That "stuffy" uniform is a mark of my heritage and skill!" The Methuselah female responded angrily.

Sakura sighed with mock-exasperation; those two would eternally have the other's back, but that didn't stop them from clashing regularly on the stupidest matters.

"Breakfast, Astha?" The pink-haired kunoichi asked, holding up an elaborately decorated bottle of Aquae Vitae.

The Duchess of Kiev accepted it wordlessly. She turned to leave when the female Crusnik added, "Why don't you join us?"

"Humans," Her eyes flickered to the Professor, "Tend to be uncomfortable around a feeding vampire."

"Have you seen _my_ breakfast?" Sakura asked, holding up a breakfast mug filled with blood.

"We would be honored to have you eat with us, Duchess Kiev." The Professor said, glancing over his shoulder.

Astha stood there for a moment, clearly weighing her options, before she took a few graceful steps forward and pulled out a chair.

"Kate informed me earlier that we are approximately twenty-two hours from our destination." The Professor said as he cut open a muffin and began to butter it lightly. "The temporal warp system is really quite impressive."

Sakura made a noise low in her throat; they had only been in stasis for twenty-four hours, to cover the majority of the distance between Earth and the planet Arishana, but the idea still made her uncomfortable.

"Even three hundred years ago, it would have been unfathomable that matter could be broken down, transported, and reconstituted." The Professor said.

Astha nodded proudly, "The Empire's shining glory is our Empress, but her crown is our technology."

"Where is Ion this morning?" Abel asked after a moment of comfortable silence.

"He excused himself this morning to attend to some training." Astha responded as she lifted the bottle of Aquae Vitae to her lips and welcomed the bitterness, the way it quenched the "thirst" in the back of her throat.

Sakura smiled lightly at her as she lifted her own cup and let the red fluid slide down her throat. And, for a moment, she mused on the strangeness of the meals they shared. Both she and Astha needed food as much as they needed blood, though it was strange to switch from a cup of vampire blood to a bagel and scrambled eggs…The kunoichi couldn't help but be grateful for Abel and the Professor's easy chatter, the way they engaged the Methuselah Duchess and the total acceptance. They lost themselves in that casual warmth, and breakfast passed as simply as it could.

"I will have to excuse myself to tend to personal preparations." Astha said finally as she rose.

"I think we all have matters to attend to." The Professor responded as he scooted away from the table.

"True. Abel and I have training." Sakura agreed.

They exchanged good-byes, promising to see each other at the final meeting that night, before they wandered off to their own corners of the ship.

* * *

><p>Sakura found herself alone in one of the small lounges that dotted the ship a few hours later. One wall was taken up by a massive window that peered into the void of space, and she suddenly felt uneasy that so little, it seemed, separated her from the black void.<p>

She let her hand drift up to the pane of glass and let her fingertips brush it, to prove to herself that it was there, strong and stable…But how easy, she thought, would it be to push harder, to mold her chakra…And if it was so easy for her, how much easier would it be for someone else…some_thing_ else…

She shook her head, chasing the dark thoughts away as she took a step back. She folded her arms over her chest, trying to chase away the chill that suddenly pervaded her.

"Is someone afraid of the dark?"

Her breath caught in her throat as an arm slithered around her, the voice finding substance just behind a puff of warm air against her ear. She felt Monica's cross pressing into the flesh of her back, the woman's gloved hand tracing her collarbone.

She laughed suddenly, the noise low and dark and seductive, "You don't have to tell me, Sakura." She leaned in even closer, her lips almost pressed against the kunoichi's slender throat as she trailed upwards towards her cheek, "I can _smell _it on you."

Sakura felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, sweat beading in the pink locks. She clenched her fists, determined not to let the assassin see her hands tremble.

Monica suddenly flexed her hips as she spun the kunoichi, forcing her back against the plate glass and leaning in dangerously close as she pinned her left hand against the window. Her red lips ghosted the pink-haired female's, smirking as she lowered her eyelids to peer into the Crusnik's green orbs.

"Do you know why you're afraid?" She pressed her hips against Sakura's, rocking sexually against her, "Because you know that no one would hear you scream."

Sakura couldn't stay the sharp inhalation of uncomfortably warm air that rushed into her lungs.

"You know that you would float forever in that void, forever alone. Drifting away from everything and everyone you ever knew, farther and farther from Earth without even the embrace of Death to comfort you."

She pressed harder, and Sakura had the sudden flash of irrational panic that the glass might give and send her into the eerie black…

"Do you know what the best aphrodisiac is, Sister?" Her voice was a low, husky whisper as her free hand trailed down Sakura' tight abdomen.

The kunoichi cringed, screaming at herself to move and at the same time too afraid that the slightest motion might break away the glass…that she would feel the icy embrace of nothingness and that would be all she would ever feel again.

"It's _fear_." Monica told her, her fingers dancing just beneath the waistband of Sakura's shorts.

The automatic doors behind the dark woman suddenly slid open to reveal the Professor. His eyes narrowed instantly, and he took several steps forward, "Monica, your conduct is inappropriate. Release Sister Sakura and return to your duties at once."

The dark female glanced over her shoulder and smirked at him, "Of course, _Professor_."

She let her hand slide back to her sides and stepped away from the kunoichi to blow a mocking kiss at the Albion Knight as she phased through the nearest wall. Her eyes found Sakura a fraction of a second before the wall swallowed her, and punctuated her eerie smirk with a wink.

The Professor frowned at the wall for several seconds before turning back to the kunoichi, "Are you alright, Sister?"

Sakura nodded as she took a deliberate step away from the glass, careful not to put the slightest pressure on it, and quickly excused herself from the room to sequester herself in the quiet lab down the hall.

But even in the dim lights and white noise, her hands clutching a cup of coffee so tightly the knuckles blanched, she didn't feel safe. All it would take was one seal to fail, one lock to malfunction...

She didn't hear the doors to the lab slide open, or the click of boots on tile. It wasn't until the Professor was standing in front of her that she realized he was there at all.

He reached down to steady her trembling hand, smiling warmly at her, as he took a seat across from her. Crossing his right ankle over his left thigh, he eased the cup from her hands and told her, "I apologize for Monica's behavior. She enjoys getting a rise out of people."

"I can tell." Sakura tried to smile, but the light didn't quite reach her eyes.

"If you'd like, Sister, you may excuse yourself from the brief this evening."

"I don't think so." Sakura responded, "I appreciate the thought but…"

But what? She didn't want to admit that Monica had scared her? That the dark woman had gotten under her skin and in her mind?

"I understand." The Professor said, cutting her train of thought. "But if you change your mind, the offer is open."

Sakura nodded.

"Please excuse me, Sakura. I have a few matters to attend to."

"Of course, Professor." She replied, smiling at him as he walked out of the lab.

* * *

><p>"Come on, Four-Eyes." Leon smirked, "Let's pick up the pace!"<p>

Abel's shriek was decidedly unintimidating, and made even more so by his clumsy flopping as he tried to dodge another chakram.

"It's a freaking miracle you're still alive with moves like those…" Leon commented with a gruff sigh as he caught the weapon and absently twirled it around his beefy finger.

"I didn't know you would try to kill me!" Abel protested dramatically as he pulled himself up from the training room floor.

"Please, Father, let's cut the theatrics." The admonition followed a stream of photons as they materialized into a familiar female figure. She glanced sideways at him, clearly exasperated, before turning back to face the larger man.

"Our final brief is in three hours." She told them. "I suggest you clean yourselves up and get some dinner before them."

"Yeah, yeah…" Leon responded bemusedly. "You're starting to sound like my mother…"

"Perhaps if you two didn't act like children, I would have to." She replied coolly as she straightened her back.

"What's for dinner?" Abel absently broke in.

"Father, we have more important matters to concern ourselves with than your stomach…" Kate sighed.

"I'm not sure I would say that." Ion smiled as he stepped into the room, clearly catching the tail end of the conversation. "Father Nightroad can be a force to be reckoned with when he's hungry.

Abel smiled wide and long.

"I'm surrounded…" Kate commented to herself before lifting her voice, "I expect to see all of you at the brief."

"Will do!" Abel flashed her a thumbs up.

Kate, for one, couldn't disappear into the electrical matrix fast enough.

TBC


	5. Chapter 4: Evanescent Whispers

_**Chapter Four: Evanescent Whispers**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Trinity Blood, or Dead Space, though a few characters, such as the Commander, are my own creation. **_

"Have we reached the _Aurora _via communication channels, yet?" The Professor asked as he scanned the numerous reports spread out in front of him.

"Yes," Kate replied, "They have answered in the affirmative that they are expecting us."

"Have we received any further information regarding their emergency?" Hugh asked.

"Unfortunately, the interference around the planet has prevented extensive communication. At the moment, we are communicating in Morse code."

"That's a rather primitive method." Hugue remarked.

Kate nodded, "But the best we have, for the moment."

"And our ETA?" Sakura inquired.

"We are approximately twelve hours from their position." Their field coordinator replied.

"And Lady Caterina?" Abel said, voicing the underlying concern of almost every AX member.

"According to Cardinal Borgia, there seems to be no immediate danger. His intelligence suggests that, for the moment, at least, the Inquisition has no designs upon her. Given her current keystone position in trade agreements between Carthage and the Vatican, she's is, and will be, in the public eye for some time. It is unlikely the Inquisition will move openly against her until negotiations are completed, if they choose to move at all."

"Yes, but that won't stop them from moving openly against the Empire…" Sakura trailed off.

"For the moment, the Inquisition shouldn't be able to move, at all." The Professor replied, "She has the Papal Council's majority on her side. To disobey the will of the Church would be tantamount to treason against the Pope. Brother Orcini would never permit such a thing."

"That doesn't mean they won't try to win over a few more votes." Leon noted.

"No, but it will buy us some time." The Albion knight responded.

"The Empire is prepared to evacuate your leader, if need calls for it." Astha said.

"The generosity is appreciated, Astha," Abel turned his gaze to her, "But Caterina would never abandon her post."

"There is only one option," Tres intoned tonelessly, "Success."

* * *

><p><em>It was so cold in the dark void; there was no warmth and the passing lights of stars were only cruel reminders of the Sun's golden embrace. It was as though the chill was there only to remind her how close Death, <em>release,_ were…how her fingertips were brushing the eerie hand of the Grim Reaper and how they would never meet. How his arms would never engulf her, embrace her, and take her far away from the hell of her waking world…_

_ How many years, she wondered, had passed? Did Earth even exist anymore? She had the passing, dark thought that maybe she was all that was left in the vastness of the universe…the only remnant of life clinging to a shred of decaying hope. Of all the planets she passed, the stars she drifted by, the moons and the rings, there had never been anything else but the unforgiving cold. _

_ Why did she hang on? She wondered to herself…how much easier would have been to let that foolish hope slip away like water between her fingers and dive into the deep abyss of insanity…to forget that she a lonely traveler with no way to return home and nothing but the endless, dark, lost corners of space where even God's whispers couldn't reach her…_

Sakura jerked awake, her back so straight it ached, sweat beading on her neck and chest despite her thin tank top. She stared into the dark, fighting back panic until her eyes could make out the silver halo of Abel's air splayed across his pillow, the sparse furniture in their shared quarters. Relieved, she released a shaky breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"Love?" He mumbled, pushing himself up on his elbow, "What's wrong?"

"Just a nightmare." She replied.

He pushed himself up on his elbow and met her gaze. Even in the dark, he could see the shimmer of tears gathering in her emerald eyes, the shine of cold sweat against her pale skin.

"Are you alright?" He asked, reaching up to brush her damp hair away and cupping her cheek with his palm, "Was it about Konoha?"

She swallowed hard, forcing back the tears that threatened to spill over her cheek. Even in _that_ dream, with the bodies and the blood and the screaming, she wasn't so alone. Even if it was fading, there was still life, still some scrap of hope and control…In this one, though, there was nothing…not even the wisp of a chance for something more…nothing but the echoing void both outside and in the inner most workings of heart...Eternity…Emptiness…The void…

"No, it wasn't." She replied. "There was no one in this dream. I was alone."

Not even Sasuke's cold laughter accompanied her there…

"Alone?" Abel asked, sitting up and letting the sheet slide off of his bare chest.

"Alone." She repeated, feeling her throat sting, "In space…forever…"

He understood at once the whispering fear of eternal abandonment… He had felt it himself, too, when he wept over Lilith's casket. He had wondered what it would be like to float forever, unfeeling, in the void…a broken heart and listless soul forever sealed in a broken body…The horror of it had stayed him, even when the overwhelming guilt, the desperate need to be punished for the wrongs he had committed, threatened to eat at his sanity.

He reached over and locked his arms around her, resting his cheek against the top of her head.

"I know it's silly, but what Monica said…" He felt her shudder in his arms, "I can't stop thinking about it…Being out there alone…forever…"

He tightened his arms around her, "Sakura, if you were out there, I would search for you until the end of time. Until the day the world ended utterly and God himself pulled us from the Abyss." The passion in his words moved her, his tone so gentle she couldn't help but remember …It was so like that first day, when he reached down to pull her from the bloodstained floor, and she could feel those words again…

"_Someone who has come to save the lives of humans…"_

She understood better in the dark, in the buzz of her body and the change in her mind, that Crusniks were creatures of _feeling_. What couldn't be expressed in words and ardent tones-The day that saved his life, that day that he offered his hand to a scared, crying Caterina, the day that would ultimately save the woman in his arms so many years later-were things that had to be _felt._

"Oh, Abel…" Her eyes stung and her throat tightened.

"You," He said, leaning down to rest his cheek against hers, "Are _never _alone."

If had intended to say more, it would have to wait, because the intercom came alive with Kate's voice: "Attention, crew. We are within range of the _Aurora_, and will proceed to airlock and pressurize in thirty minutes."

* * *

><p>There was a certain oddity to standing in such a familiar group in such unfamiliar surroundings; it was apparent in every singular detail how important, and different, this mission was from their usual objectives.<p>

Leon, Hugue, and Tres were the only three in their usual priestly black robes and white scarves. The Professor stood just off to the right of them, his hand in the pocket of a pair of black trousers. Tucked into them, he wore a white button up shirt and a black jacket. A gold chain ran from the vest of his suit into his back pocket, where he kept a watch. Kate had projected herself just behind and off to the left of him. Her holographic image consisted of a slate grey business dress with a scooped neckline, three-quarters sleeves, and a cinched waist. The legs of the image were wrapped in opaque black tights that ended in black heels. Monica, looking decidedly bored in the far back, wore a short, tight pinstriped skirt with vents that climbed towards her hip. Underneath a similar jacket, she wore a frilly white blouse that was undone to reveal her ample chest. The image was not helped by the lack of hosiery or the red stiletto heels she wore. Abel, who stood with his lover off to the left of the main airlock, was dressed in a black suit with a dark blue tie. The female Crusnik by his side wore a black business skirt with a conservative vent in the back, a simple white blouse underneath a white lab coat, and black pumps underneath her nude hose. Ion wore the complicated black and white outfit of an Empiric civilian. The female Methuselah to his right wore the complicated and richly colored dress of her house.

There were only a few moments of tense silence before the light on the airlock flickered green and, with the hiss of pressurized air, began to slide open. On the other side was the Commander, escorted by two of her men.

"Commander Sarala," The Professor stepped forward, extending his hand, "A pleasure to meet you. I regret it is under such dire circumstances. My name is William Walter Wordsworth."

Chandrakantar accepted the outstretched hand, clapping her free one of their clasp, "Likewise."

The Professor turned around, "These are members of the AX team and their Empiric emissaries. Sister Kate Scott is our pilot and field coordinator."

The pretty strawberry blonde smiled at the Commander and bobbed her head.

"Father Leon Garcia de Asturias, Father Hugue de Watteau, and Father Tres Iqus comprise our guard and combat team." The Albion knight continued, motioning to the three men.

Tres replied simply for all three of them with a simple, "Affirmative."

"Father Nightroad is a Vatican ambassador to the Empire, and will be working with our emissaries, The Duchess of Kiev and Odess, Lady Astharoshe Asran, and the Earl of Memphis, Sword-bearer of the Empress, Ion Fortuna."

"We are proud to stand here for our Mother Empress." Astha said simply with a bow that Ion mirrored.

"The Vatican, too, is honored to be called upon." Abel added with a respectful smile.

"Monica Argento is also among our crew." The Professor said, and Sakura couldn't help but wonder if he omitted her official designation so he wouldn't have to lie about her position in the team.

"And this," He extended his free hand at the pink-haired kunoichi, "Is Doctor Sakura Haruno, who will be working closely with me."

She took a step forward, extending her hand and clapping it with the Commander's.

"Excellent," Chandrakantar said, "I apologize for my rudeness, but I would like to begin our brief."

"No apologies are necessary," The Professor assured her, "Please, continue."

The tall female Methuselah nodded, "Please follow me."

She turned around, crossing her arms behind her back and began speaking, "Approximately ten Earth-days ago, the _Aurora _and her associated ships fell into orbit around the Arishana. Within three days, there was a sudden spike in incidences of depression, paranoia, hallucinations, violence, and suicide. At this point, only roughly fifty percent of our original crew remain operational. It is our belief that we are dealing with a biological contaminant."

"Why didn't you pull out when you first came to this conclusion?" Ion asked.

"Understand, this project is the culmination of two and a half decades of work that brought together the greatest minds in the Empire, the best of our technology, and the most qualified and elite crew members. The value of this project is in excess of four hundred billion Empiric dollars. Pulling out is not an option."

Obviously, Abel thought to himself, there was a lot at stake…

"About a week ago, we started to see a drastic spike in violence among the crew. Initially, we believed it to be stress from the dig. After all, our crew was mining, sorting, and cataloging for twenty hours at a time."The Commander continued, "And then we began to see drastic spikes in incidences of violence and suicide. Many of our crew have fallen into psychotic episodes, and are currently being held in the medical bay under restraints and sedatives to prevent them from injuring themselves or others. As a consequence, our bay is far over its intended capacity."

"What measures have your medical crew taken?" Sakura asked, wondering what quarantine protocols were already in place, if any.

"Three of our five junior doctors are dead," The Commander responded, a harsh tone in her voice, "The other two are locked down in the medical bay. Of our two doctors, only Doctor Yamika Sanvali is alive. We began with ten nurses, of which seven are dead. Of the remaining three, one remains in critical condition after an assault by a psychotic crewmember. The other two are working round the clock to try and manage the patient influx."

"Please, allow myself and Doctor Haruno to assist you." William responded, "We can begin immediately."

The Commander nodded, "Private Ivanchuk will escort you."

The taller of the two males with her nodded at her and broke away from her. "Please," He said with a bow to William and Sakura, "Follow me this way."

As the pink-haired Crusnik and Albion knight departed from the group, Astha asked, "What division of labor are you currently using?"

"At the moment, all personal are considered essential. We have halted the drilling process and are in stand-by mode. It's taking almost all of our resources to keep life support and necessary systems operational on all five ships."

"Have you considered condensing the operation temporarily to three or four ships?" The Duchess of Kiev inquired.

The Commander shook her head, "Only this ship, our Alpha, is fully equipped. Our four support ships are all specialized. It would be impossible to make that kind of shift without losing systems on the ground."

"I see." Ion responded, "Commander, if you don't mind, I'd like to begin interviewing the crew. May we trouble you for escorts?"

"Of course." Chandrakantar responded, motioning to several crewmembers who were waiting off to the side.

"See to it," She told them before disappearing back to the Bridge, "That they are well-taken care."

* * *

><p>The automatic doors slid open to reveal a scene that was less than promising. With a quick glance at his female counterpart, the Professor smiled at their escort and dismissed him. The young Private nodded, bowed deeply, and very quickly disappeared down the hall.<p>

Stepping into the bay, Sakura's eyes landed on a woman with rich ebony colored skin. She wore her long dark purple hair in a complicated plait that ran down the back of her white coat. Her eyes were an unusual sunset color, and were offset even more so by her dark grey clothing.

"Doctor Sanvali, I presume." The Professor said, extending his hand.

She smiled at his, clearly tired, "Yes. And you are?"

"William Walter Wordsworth. And this young woman is Sakura Haruno, of the AX and Empiric cooperative."

"It was our understanding you could use some assistance." The pink-haired Crusnik replied.

The female Methuselah nodded, "Have you been briefed?"

"Yes, but we would like to assess the situation with you." The Albion knight replied.

"I wish I had more to offer, but I haven't had time to compile much data." The dark-skinned female responded as she pulled up a computer screen. "Based on my observations, we're dealing with a biological contaminant, but I haven't had time to prepare and run samples."

"That's quite alright," William told her. "Doctor Haruno can relieve you here in the medical bay and I will begin prepping the pathology lab."

The tight lines around Yamika's mouth and eyes softened, and she nodded at them, clearly too tired to argue. "If you need anything, please don't hesitate to come to my quarters."

The Professor smiled, "Thank you."

The dark-skinned beauty glanced back at them once more before walking through the automatic doors. Based on the way the Professor's eyes narrowed, Sakura knew that he, too, had seen the stumble in her step and the glassiness of her eyes…

"Will you be alright here for a while, Sister?" He finally asked.

"Of course." She replied, "I'll see what I can do here and we can discuss our findings later this evening."

"Excellent." William said resolutely as he began to prep a set of hypodermic needles and vials.

* * *

><p>Abel had to fight the urge to crinkle his nose; the acrid smell of fear hung heavily everywhere he went, and was laced with the sickly sweet stench of death. But it was in more than just the odors, it was in the eyes of the crew and the way they sat and listlessly stared at their meals in the cafeteria, or restlessly paced the halls. He could hear it in the whispers through the walls, and feel it in the iciness that pervaded the ship. There was more significance, though, to what he didn't smell: sickness.<p>

There was nothing in the air that smelled of inflammation and pus and the surge of white blood cells. He couldn't pick up the smell of festering infection, or the bitterness of ailing stomachs, and there wasn't any iron in the air; no blood, fresh or old, which he could detect.

Baffled, he could only stand silently and watch and hope to find some tiny thread to connect the jumbled pieces together. What, he had to wonder, did it all mean? What was the silver strand that stretched between all of them?

TBC


	6. Chapter 5: In the Whispering Dark

_**Chapter Five: In the Whispering Dark**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Trinity Blood, or Dead Space! A few select characters, however, are my own design! **_

Sakura had to fight against the sinking feeling in her chest when she looked up from her light microscope: The room was stacked high and wide with white sample kits that had been painstakingly labeled with the name, medical reference number, position, rank, and species of each individual. Hundreds of patients were reflected in thousands of samples. And that wasn't even the bulk of her left were no less than eight clipboards stacked high with observations and notes, and to her right were thousands of sheets of results from dozens of scans. That didn't even account for the number of tests still being run, either.

Steeling herself, she reached for a cup of coffee that had long since congealed into sludge and continued to study the blood-smeared slides. Peering through the scope, she failed to see anything abnormal about the blood, though chemistry counts were coming back with some atypical results. Their potassium and lactic acid levels were elevated across the board, and there were enzymes present in quantities that she wouldn't have expected in to find in a living body.

Sighing, she pulled away from the eyepiece of the microscope and rested her head for a moment in her palms, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hands.

She heard the doors behind her slide open suddenly and turned to face them; to her surprise, it was the Professor. He smiled at her, pressing a fresh cup of coffee into her hands before taking a seat next to her.

He had dressed down considerably over the course of the day, likely due to the heat in the lab generated by so much equipment and the late hour, and wore only a white, buttoned-down dress shirt that was tucked loosely into his dark trousers. Despite his casual appearance, though, she could see and feel his fatigue.

"How are you holding up?" She asked as she lifted the mug to her lips. The coffee was sweet, strong, and blessedly hot.

"Quite well." He replied, "Yourself?"

"Frustrated." She admitted, "It's all so…chaotic…"

"Entropy is the way of the universe." He reminded her with a good-natured smile.

"True," She replied, "But I can't help feeling like I'm on the edge of something…"

"What have you found?" He asked.

"I originally thought that we were dealing a neurotoxin, but something just isn't adding up. The blood chemistries I've completed all have elevated potassium and lactic acid levels. Also, their cells are leaking digestive enzymes. That would seem to imply that they are dying, but cardiac, respiratory, and brain wave patterns are all stable, if not abnormal."

"My original hypothesis had been the same, but I haven't been able to detect any toxins, or any naturally occurring substance in toxic levels, in the brain scans." The Professor said.

She nodded, "Not only that, but a single toxin shouldn't generate the same hallucination in everyone that comes into contact with it. Or symptoms that are so…standardized. There is no statistically relevant individual variation."

"True, but at least that limits the range we were originally looking at. It seems that we can rule out multiple or compound causes given that all of them are experiencing the same symptoms: psychotic episodes, self-mutilation, unprovoked violence towards others, and increasing paranoia." The Professor thought out-loud.

Sakura glanced down at her clipboard as she read over her observations, "The symptoms share an uncanny resemblance with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome: the self-injurious compulsions without the loss of pain sensation, the violent social behaviors…But the HPRT1 gene is normal in all of them, and there's no build up of uric acid in the tissues. Moreover, Lesch-Nyhan almost always afflicts males, but females are deteriorating at the same rate." She shook her head and backtracked, "And a mutant gene wouldn't explain the sudden onset in unrelated genetic lines, anyway."

The Professor nodded, silently impressed with her rationale: Given that the original Methuselah had been humans exposed to the bacillus, vampires and humans shared DNA that was almost a hundred percent identical. There were only a handful of genes, a few dozen, out of more than twenty-two thousand that, that separated them. Moreover, Armageddon had flipped an evolutionary switch: genes that were once obsolete and dormant in the genome, some thought to be entirely eliminated with gene therapy, were suddenly expressed again. Among them had been Lesch-Nyhan, which balanced the spread of "vampirism" in the human population: When exposed to the bacillus, the defective gene completely eliminated the HPRT1 enzyme, which was responsible for the breakdown of uric acid in the body. Levels of the acid quickly rose to lethal levels, and had been a limiting factor in the spread of the bacillus that ultimately contributed to the salvation of species of man, _homo sapien_, from the tide of _homo aeternalis. _Of course, that had been a time when the world itself was a lawless land and again ruled by the principles of natural selection; now, those driving forces were mitigated and managed by social order, religion, and the structures of ethics and morality.

"What about a biological contaminant?" She finally asked, hand on her chin, gazing to the side and down in thought.

"That would seem to be our least likely wager: The immune system of a human and that of a Methuselah are already so radically different in physiology that there shouldn't be more than a few dozen contaminants that could affect both." He responded.

"I still think we need to seriously consider that this might be ground zero for a new biological contagion. What about a bacterial strain?" She asked, "After all, both of the bacillus strands that result in vampirism and the bacillus in the body of Crusniks were discovered in space."

"While that is true, the scans on the samples collected both by Doctor Sanvali and myself have failed to yield results conclusive with a bacterial or viral strain. There is no identified organic matter in the saliva, blood, or cerebrospinal fluid of any of the patients that would explain their symptoms, and nothing unidentified was found, either." He replied.

She shook her head to herself, unsure of wear to go next. They had ruled out a new contagion, toxins, heavy metal poisonings, and pre-existing infections and were now grasping at straws.

"Are we sure we calibrated everything correctly?" She asked.

"I'm certain of it." He told her.

"So we've ruled out an environmental factor like heavy metal poisoning and are left with something that appears to be contagious. That, though, is biologically impossible because there is no contagion and no string of transmission and infection…" She trailed off.

"Interestingly enough, though, there appears to be some biotic component: I found an interesting abnormality in an earlier scanning test. One of the blood samples from Private Thyial was contaminated with _ colitis; _but there was something odd about it: it's an almost identical copy to a mother strain of the bacteria."

Sakura frowned, "That isn't right…it should have mutated to some degree and continued to do so once it entered her body."

"Precisely," William replied, "I would expect to see such a prolific bacteria mutating and dividing at a much higher rate."

"What was the statistical deviation from the norm?"

"Thirteen marks from the standard."

"That suggests that another bacterium is crowding it out…." She rested her hand on hip, her eyes on the floor in deep thought. "But I know the scans refute that possibility…."

"I had the passing thought that perhaps radiation might somehow be a contributing factor and ran several DNA samples under an electron microscope." He told her, pulling up a report.

"I assume when you viewed the samples under an electron microscope that there was no change in the DNA or the sequencing."

"None. And DNA profiling confirms there are no abnormalities. Moreover, Geiger counter counts confirm that there is no significant level of radiation aboard the ships, in the atmosphere, or from the planet itself."

Sakura sighed deeply, turning her head up to stare at the ceiling for a moment.

"Perhaps we're thinking too hard, my dear." He said, staring down at the wristband on his left hand. "We've been working for over twenty hours. I believe rest would do us both some good."

"Go ahead without me, Professor." She replied, "I have a few tests I want to finish."

"Don't work too long by yourself, Sakura." He cautioned her, "An empty lab has a way of breeding dark thoughts."

"I won't." She assured him, waving at him as he stepped from the lab.

* * *

><p>Astha walked the halls silently, scanning them for signs of anything suspicious. Try as she might, though, she could find nothing to suggest what might be the cause of their current situation. But something nagged at her, whispered in the back of her mind, though there was nothing in the air, nothing in the water that she could detect…<p>

"Lady Asran."

She turned to glance over her shoulder at the Albion knight.

"Lord Wordsworth." She replied with a polite bob of her head, "This is a late hour for Terrans."

"Precisely why I shall retire forthwith." He said, "Though I wanted to drop by the medical bay first."

"May I accompany you?"

"It would be an honor, Lady Asran."

As they started down the corridor, she inquired about the state of affairs on his side. He replied that he regretted to inform her that despite their best efforts, the medical team was no closer to resolving the issue.

"It is a difficult one." She said. "But I believe in you."

"I mean no offense, but I was under the impression that Methuselah didn't have a concept of belief."

"Not of religious belief," She allowed, "But my Mother Empress has trusted her children to you. And, unfailingly, I shall tread the path she carves for me."

He smiled to himself; how hard was it to see the similarities between humans and Methuselah? One lead by a Holy Father, the other led by the dark goddess, the mortal embodiment of Nyx, Augusta Vradica…and both with unshakable faith and unmovable strength of will. Together, he wondered what they could accomplish. That thought, however, reminded him of the gravity of the situation: This was a test of the two nation's combined efforts, and would set an unprecedented example on an international scale. If they failed…He cut his train of thought and fell back on his belief.

"After you, My Lady." He said as the doors in front of them.

She stepped inside, waiting politely for him to follow after her. At the head of the double line of beds and patients are the far extreme of the room, she saw a desk occupied by a harried looking woman.

"Doctor Sanvali," The Professor stepped forward, "I hope you don't mind the intrusion. Are you faring well?"

The woman didn't seem to hear him, and her hands moved frantically in the draws of the medical cabinets. She was clearly looking for something.

The Professor smiled at Astha before turning back around and walking down the artificial corridor.

"Doctor Sanvali?" He repeated as he neared her.

She glanced up at him, and muttered something.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" He replied, cocking his brow.

"Make…us…One." She chanted brokenly, her eyes glazed over.

As she stepped around the desk, he suddenly realized she was bleeding from her legs and wrists, spattering her white coat red. He failed to see, though, what was clutched in her hand.

It happened in an instant: The Doctor lifted the blade high into the air, ready to drive it deep. Astha cried out, appearing in a blur of color and motion. As the Doctor's hand fell, Astha's rose, and she caught the scalpel on the downward plunge. She pushed herself forward off of her heel, slamming her knee hard against Yamika's sternum. Yamika fell like a puppet with her strings cut into Astha's waiting arms.

"It would seem that our situation has deteriorated further." The blonde Methuselah noted with a sharp edge in her voice.

* * *

><p>The kunoichi frowned as she pulled away from the restrained woman and shook her head.<p>

"Nothing?" The Professor asked.

"Nothing." She confirmed, "Everything is checking out the way it should."

Her pupils were dilating normally, there was nothing on her breath or body to suggest poisoning, nothing in her blood chemistries…

"All I can determine is that these injuries were self-inflicted…just like most of the others..." She sighed.

She turned back to look at the Doctor…and to wonder what lie just behind those beautifully colored eyes that were the window to her soul…what, she thought to herself as she injected more sedative, had flung her into the abyss of insanity?

TBC


	7. Chapter 6: Silence in the Dark

_**Chapter Six: Silence In the Dark**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Dead Space, Trinity Blood, or Naruto. I do, however, claim ownership over a select few characters, like the Commander. **_

She awoke suddenly, confused for a long moment and disoriented before she realized that Kate was summoning her. She glanced over at the other side of the bed and realized Abel wasn't there. She didn't allow herself to think too deeply about that fact as she yanked on clean clothes.

She stumbled out of her room and into the hall, where both Ion and Hugue were hurrying down towards the Bridge. Falling in line behind them, she asked, "Why are we in code red?"

"All we know is that it's a critical code." Ion responded.

"I expect a full brief is awaiting us." Hugue replied with unnatural calm as they stepped through the sliding doors.

The command center was in complete disarray. There were well over four dozen people shouting at each other, screaming out seemingly random numbers, and running across the room between several computers and systems.

"What's going?" Sakura asked, approaching the Commander who stood silently and strongly in the middle of the chaos.

"There's an emergency on the ground." She replied, nodding to Kate to pick up where she left off.

"Approximately an hour ago, the _Aurora _lost communication with the ground unit. Originally believed to be the result of a passing magnetic storm, it has quickly become apparent that something is amiss."

Kate motioned with her chin towards the screen pulled down in the middle of the room: the feed flickered violently, sending ripples through the images. Through the static, though, it was clear that something had happened…it was dark, and from the main viewing hubs, Sakura could see there was no electricity coming from the ground hubs. More than that, though, was the eerie quiet through the gentle hiss of white noise.

"We aren't getting vitals on any of the crews, and there are failing to respond to attempts to communicate." Kate continued, "But we have a more pressing issue."

"And that would be?" Leon asked gruffly.

"That entire system is powered with a nuclear core. Without video feeds and communication lines, we can't confirm damage, but thermals are rapidly rising. Without the electrical systems to feed coolant into the reactor, the core is going to go critical in a matter of hours." Kate said.

"Damn it." Leon replied.

"Can it be deactivated remotely?" Abel asked.

"No. The storm knocked out many of our wireless systems. They won't be operational for quite some time." The Commander responded.

"Where are the central plans?" The Professor asked.

"Over here!" An ensign cried, glancing over his shoulder. Spread in front of him on the control consoles were several blueprints.

Crowding close to him in a circle, the AX began a frantic conversation, a tiny hub of order in the ocean of confusion that surrounded them.

"The most efficient access point would be infiltration via the housing dome." Tres noted, his finger resting on a sketch of the unit that held the reactor.

"No," Sakura replied quickly, "If we puncture the dome, we're going to catastrophically compromise life support to the entire ground crew."

"She's right." Hugue said.

"That leaves us with only one access point." The Professor said as he traced a path from the main docking bay on the far side of the compound.

"How long will it take us to cross?" Hugue asked.

"Approximately two hours." Kate replied.

"Assuming we don't encounter any surprises." Ion added.

"And how long until the reactor goes critical?" Abel asked.

"Approximately twenty." Their field coordinator responded.

"Several of our teams are prepared to move, as well." The Commander replied.

"The offer is appreciated, Commander, but your resources are stretched thinly as it is." The Professor said.

Monica smirked all too knowingly at the Professor; Abel met her gaze for a long moment, his eyes narrowed with disapproval.

The Albion knight continued uninterrupted, "Please, allow us handle this situation."

"We will accompany them." Astha assured her, standing close to her younger male comrade.

The Commander hesitated for a fraction of a second before she nodded her head and ordered her teams to start prepping for an emergency mission drop.

* * *

><p>"What are these?" Leon asked, cocking his brow and frowning deeply. In his hands he clutched a piece of stitched black cloth. He looked every bit as uncomfortable as the rest of them. Clad in nothing but tank tops and shorts or trunks, the atmosphere in the briefing room was tense at best.<p>

"I realize this equipment is unfamiliar," Kate replied, "But it is necessary. Those suits are self-contained life support units. You each have an hour of air in that unit. It restocks automatically when you enter a room with a breathable atmosphere. Moreover, the connections in the suit are fed directly by central nervous system impulses. Those signals are beamed back to my mainframe."

"And these weapons?" Ion asked.

"Near-range and multi-purpose." Kate replied, "Your default is a low-temperature plasma round. It will be more than sufficient for protecting yourself and with it you won't risk damaging the external shielding systems and walls."

"And this bar on the back?" Abel's hand glided along the aqua blue ridge that would lie against his spine.

"That is a miniature computer." Kate told him, "The bar is a simple visual reading of the more complicated nervous system readings I'll be seeing. It also has built in audio-visual communication systems, though I can't guarantee what kind, if any, ground-to-air communication we'll have."

"What is our current plan of action?" The Professor asked.

"You will be lifted from the ship via maintenance pod and airdropped onto the surface approximately three hundred meters from the entry. Once you arrive, Tres will jack into the system and electronically hack the system. That will preserve the functions of the safety doors behind the main set." Kate said.

"What about the reactor itself?" Hugue inquired.

"The plan is to re-establish coolant circulation by restoring the electrical systems. There is, however, a last resort contingency." Her normally kind eyes slid over to Sakura and Abel.

"If the situation deteriorates catastrophically, you are hereby cleared by both the Vatican and the Empire to sacrifice ground personnel in the interest of preserving the _Aurora_ and her secondary ships."

"That won't happen." Abel assured her with a goofy smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

Kate managed a smile of her own despite the gravity of the situation, "I have the utmost faith in all of you."

"We won't let you down." The silver-haired priest replied.

The pilot's holographic face suddenly turned serious and she said, high and calmly, "Suit up and prepare for deployment!"

There was a collective cry in the affirmative and a shuffle of movement. With no time to indulge in privacy or modesty, the group settled for turning away from each other to slip into their suits. It took only a few minutes to seal the suits and synchronize them before checking their gear.

With preliminaries complete, they then moved from the room down the twisting hallways to the hanger bay.

It was an enormous room that was clustered with several locked down ships and a few bolted crates on the far side of the room, but little else. Facing away from the ship was a double door with the words 'Caution: Airlock' emblazoned across them.

Turned towards that door on a circular platform was a small airship; the drop down door that fed into the body of the ship had been withdraw and pulled down to form a ramp. On the edge of it were two Privates.

"Privates Michaelia Lysradra and Dariam Flether reporting for duty." They chimed in unison before Private Lysradra broke in singularly, "We will be your drop-team."

"What is our plan of entry?" Hugue asked.

"We will pull into a hover approximately three hundred meters from the main doors of the compound. From there, we will deploy a cable. Your team will repel down onto the surface and we will pull back into orbit." Flether replied.

"Let's haul out, then." Leon said as he walked up the ramp.

Abel spared a tight smile at Sakura and Astha before he followed after the Hispania native. Not far behind, Tres was hauling a crate of extra munitions aboard and the Professor was double-checking a haul of oxygen tanks.

"We should board." Astha said simply as she glided forward.

The pink-haired Crusnik nodded and followed after her.

The inside of the small carrier was lined with rows of seats. Flung open above them were harness-like restrains that would drop down over the operatives. Forward of the seats was a door that slid open into the cockpit.

Taking her seat, Sakura pulled the restrain system over her chest and tried to relax as the rest of her teammates settled in; beside her, Abel took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, and that grip tightened as the ramp lifted up and folded back down and the doors slid shut.

The roar that accompanied the echo of the warning siren as the bay doors slid open to reveal emptiness of space and the half-moon of the planet that spun in it. The gravity in the ship suddenly changed, and the pink-haired Crusnik realized that they were floating in the dark velvet of the universe.

She bit back her panic, closed her eyes, and leaned back into the seat. She couldn't tell how much time had passed before the ship suddenly pulled into a stable position and the intercom buzzed to life.

"We are in position." Lysradra said.

"Understood." Astha said as she lifted the restraint from her ample chest and pulled her helmet over her blonde hair.

The rest of the team followed suit in silence and not more than a minute later the doors behind them flipped open and a cable dropped down the sandy surface of the planet fifty feet down.

"Father Iqus," The Professor motioned to the cable, "You'll go down first and cover our descent."

The android replied in the affirmative and stepped forward; clipping the support system around his hips to the cable, he gently lowered himself from the ramp and repelled down to the surface. He quickly pulled his gun, did a preliminary scan, and signaled up to the Professor to continue.

Hugue and Leon followed next as back-up, and behind them Monica, Astha, and Ion were lowered to the ground. Sakura went next, and the Professor was dropped down second to last with Abel in the rear.

The cable was pulled up, the bay doors sealed, and the small carrier drifted back into the atmosphere.

"Let's move." Hugue said as he took the lead.

Moving in formation, it took them fifteen minutes to cover three hundred meters, and at no point did they see any of the sentries who were supposed to be posted at the perimeter. Littered just outside of the main compound doors, though, were a number of spent shells…

"There was a skirmish." Leon said, glancing at the casings from behind the visor of his helmet.

"We'll have to assume the worst." Astha said, her hand on her hip, as Tres jacked into the system.

His eyes glowed brilliant red in the twilight darkness of the planet. Through the steel doors, the metallic clink of shifting gears and circuits echoed, and a moment later the doors slid open silently.

"That's a bad sign…" Ion commented, "That air should have been pressurized."

"Life support could already be compromised station-wide." Abel remarked.

"We're modifying." The Professor said, "Abel, Sakura, Ion, and Astha will continue on to the reactor and shut it down. Father Iqus, Father Garcia and myself will attempt to restore power and emergency life support systems. Sister Argento and Father de Watteau will move ahead and prepare to activate primary systems to the compound." The Professor said.

"Leave it to us." Ion responded as he pried the door open and took a step inside.

TBC


	8. Chapter 7: A Scrambling in the Dark

_**Chapter Seven: Screaming in the Dark**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Dead Space, Trinity Blood, or Naruto. I do, however, claim ownership over a select few characters, like the Commander.**_

The interior was a coalesced mass of yawning black; in the distance, there was a spray of sparks that did nothing to cut the abyssal dark. Sprayed across the floor were hundreds of ammunition shells, and she could almost taste something in the air…

She turned back as Tres and the Professor sealed the doors. For a moment, without even the pale light to illuminate the dark, she found herself floundering in a sea of liquid night. But the blue glow of the suits around her comforted her, and her eyes adjusted quickly.

"Let's move out." The Professor suggested, hefting his weapon and taking his place beside Tres.

Monica and Hugue broke away automatically and disappeared quickly into the darkness; a moment later, even the Professor and Tres were gone.

"We should get going." Astha prodded gently, taking the first step forward.

* * *

><p>"A defensive line fell here." Leon remarked, kneeling on the ground and shining his flashlight across the floor.<p>

In an organized line, the spent shell casings would fall in a concentration around a unit to form something of a rough circle. But when a line fell apart, a platoon panicked, or a unit was torn apart, that scatterplot of munitions shells would change. In this case, the metal fragments were strewn haphazardly across the floor without the concentration gradient he would see in a concerted effort.

Most likely, he thought to himself as he tracked the direction of the shells, they had started in a line against the far wall. But, for some reason, they had broken apart suddenly; he knew from the pattern of gunfire against the walls that it hadn't been an organized evacuation-they had panicked.

"Any signs of life?" He asked the android as he rose from his crouch.

"Negative." The Killing Doll replied.

"I'm not surprised." The Hispania said.

The shells littering the floor were cold, there were no fresh prints over the smeared boot scuff marks on the floor, and no disturbance in the metal scraps to suggest that someone had come through after the initial line fell.

"We appear to have a problem, gentlemen." The Professor remarked from behind the beam of his flashlight, "The doors are sealed and barricaded."

Leon followed the trail of light to the metal doors that should have led into a commons-type area. Taking a step forward, he surveyed the numerous crates that had been dragged in front of the door. There was no order to them, and most of them were already beginning to fall from the stack; but there was something more.

The gruff man's eyes narrowed as he took a step forward and pulled his glove away from his hand. Reaching into the gap between two crates, he ran his finger against the seam of the doors.

"They welded these doors shut." He said as he pulled back.

"That implies some troubling things." The Professor remarked back, staring at the door.

"Like what the hell they were trying to keep out." Leon responded.

* * *

><p>With the door sealed behind them, the oxygen in the room rose quickly, and a moment later Sakura pulled her helmet from her face and clipped it to her belt. As she did, though, she suddenly realized there was something in the air.<p>

Wafting above the soft plastic and chemical scents there was something metallic…Her eyes dropped to the floor and she followed the odor to a wide swath of crimson that spilled from a hallway to her left and up into a vent in the far back of the room.

"It's blood." She said, noting the quick swivel of Astha's eyes.

The pink-haired Crusnik took a few steps forward and knelt down on the floor. Pressing herself close to the floor, she inhaled the heavy iron odor. Her eyes thinning, she ran her finger along the edge of the trail and brought it tentatively to her mouth.

The _wrongness _of it was an electrical shock. Her entire body rebelled against it: her heart fluttered, her stomach spasmed, bile flooded her mouth, and her throat clenched. She gagged, coughing so violently that she nearly vomited.

"That isn't the blood of a Methuselah, or a human." She said, finding her footing and taking a step back as she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

"That begs the question what creature it does belong to." Astha replied.

"We can figure that out later." Ion broke in.

"Kate said we should take that left." Abel motioned to the door, the blood still seeping from underneath it.

"I'll go first." Astha offered.

Walking up to the side of the door, she peered through the gap between its edge and the locking mechanism on the wall. There was no draft to suggest a compromise further down the length of the compound, and she could see nothing in the darkness.

She glanced over her shoulder to nod at the rest of her unit before bracing her shoulder against the wall and bracketing her hands on either side of the sliding metal door. She pushed hard, and the metal creaked loudly before finally sliding back on its track.

The blonde beauty peered once more into the dark, and, finding nothing, stepped into it.

* * *

><p>"Well, this is hardly my idea of a party," Monica said as she sidled up to Hugue. She pressed herself full against him, capturing his wrist with her hand and smirking at him, "But I'm sure we could find ways to spice it up."<p>

"Lady Argento, we have a mission to complete." He replied evenly as he freed his hand and slid away from her.

"_So _priestly," She said, running her tongue across her lips, "But I'm sure even you have _needs_."

"Silence." He replied, his eyes diverted away from her and into the darkness. His hand rested on the handle of the katana at his side, his muscles tense.

Monica smirked as she pulled her dagger from the sheath at her hip. "Now things are getting interesting."

* * *

><p>"Stop." Leon's hand went out automatically as he halted his unit.<p>

His eyes flickered up as something slithered in the vents overhead. There was a faint '_schink'_ against the metal, and then deafening silence.

"Tres?" Leon's voice held the thrum of a threat, "Anything?"

"Negative. No life signs." He replied.

* * *

><p>The map on the wall was smeared in blood and black filth. According to the diagram, they were in the far first level southern portion of the mining base. The reactor was found in the center of the base on the third floor down. It appeared they would need to take the tram car that ran from one end of the base to the other to the center of the first floor and then take the maintenance shafts down to the second floor. They would need to make the final push to the northern end of the base before the maintenance tunnels for the third floor would be accessible.<p>

"Electrical systems are still down." Astha told them as she typed furiously at one of the panels.

Sakura tapped the earpiece that coiled around her throat and over the shell of her ear, "Professor, do you read?"

The reply was garbled, but intelligible, "I copy, Sister. Continue."

"How close are you to restoring power?"

"We've encountered a problem. It appears the crew welded the doors shut sometime ago. We're attempting to find another way through until we're certain the support systems on the other side are still functioning."

"Copy that." Sakura told him, turning to her group and sighing, "We'll have to make it on foot."

"This is very odd. At the very least, we should be finding bodies..." Ion commented.

"Stay vigilant." Astha shrugged, proceeding to walk forward. She walked to the edge of the platform where it dropped to open up for the Tram cars and their complicated rail system. Planting her hands, she dangled her lower body off the edge of it and came to rest on the track. She stepped to the side to the small maintenance overhangs and noted that the vents were completely destroyed.

"Tovarish!"

Abel swung himself down to meet her. His eyes were sharp against the dim, flickering lights of the base. Emergency generators were probably beginning to run low.

"This is a disturbing find..." He remarked.

Astha's response never left her lips; Sakura screamed something at Ion, who cried out. Abel turned to return to her and something dropped down out of the ceiling. It slashed at Abel's face and the priest danced backwards as his glasses shattered and were flung across the room. He pulled Astha back with him.

"What is that foul thing?" The Duchess demanded, lifting her gun.

It was bent horribly on it's emaciated, elongated spine. The forearms had sharpened into jagged spikes of yellow bone. The face might have once been human, but now it hung on a serpentine hinge to reveal rows and rows of impossibly sharp death. The eyes were a disgusting milky white. The abdomen had been opened and writhing around in the guts of it were two arms tipped with talons.

"I don't know." Abel stepped between her and it, wielding his plasma gun. He aimed high and as it jerked and ran at them, placed a white-hot round through its head. The thing was carried backwards by the force of it and went limp.

"Sakura! Ion!" He shouted up.

"We're alright." Sakura called back down. She swung herself from the platform to meet him with Ion close behind. She was covered in gore and the vampire youth was shaking.

"I have no idea what they are...but the one up there was wearing the badge key of a crewman assigned to the lower deck." Ion said, presenting the badly damaged card to Abel.

"Let me see what I can find." Sakura said, pulling a pair of latex gloves from her chest pocket and snapping them over her wrists. She approached the dead thing, knelt to inspect it, and was impaled through the chest. It screamed horribly, twisting itself around to its feet, and flung her bodily.

Abel shot upwards, carried by his legs, and landed on top of the twisted monstrosity. He brought his weight and his revolver down again and again and again. Bits of the thing were flung in all directions, smearing him in necrotic flesh and congealed blood. It was until he had reduced it to a limbless smear of black and green that it finally stopped howling.

Astha scrambled over to the kunoichi, cradling her against her chest; the young woman whimpered painfully, the back of her throat gurgling with blood. Her breathing was so horribly hitched, picking up in short, painful gasps.

"Breathe, my Tovarish, breathe." The stunning blonde rolled her to the side and rapped the heel of her hand against Sakura's back to force the blood out of her throat.

Abel rushed to her, pulling her hair away from her face and running his fingers around her mouth to pull the clots out. She convulsed, gagging, and trying to say something. Her eyes were wide and wet, staring up over Abel's shoulder. Abel struck her sternum hard, forcing her to take a breath and vomit the blood sitting in her stomach. Her chest started to stricture, the flesh beginning to pull close while bone shifted back into place. Abel helped her to her feet, standing close while she coughed up the remaining gunk in her lungs.

"They're...not..." She choked, spitting up chunks of bone.

Sakura took a deep breath and straightened to put on a new pair of gloves. She leaned over the body of the dead thing and traced the smear of its internal organs. The brain, she realized as she scraped it up with her fingers, had been near the thigh. The blackened chunk of flesh that had once been a heart was in the upper arm, braced back against the bone.

"I need to see the other one." She told them.

Three minutes later, as she braced herself over the remains of the one on the upper platform, she realized their systems were completely unnatural. There were no blood vessels, they had been replaced by hollow tubes of a foreign tissue the circulated fleshy clots of blood and tissue. Their organs had been completely twisted. The only organ she found in the shattered remains of its head was a small shred of what she thought was kidney.

She radioed the Professor, her voice shaking, "We're not alone. The enemy is hostile. Repeat, proceed with extreme prejudice. They're unlike anything I've ever seen. Don't bother trying with a clean kill. Dismember them." She told him.

"Sister? Sister, please repeat." His voice fuzzed out.

"Damn it!" She clenched her fist.

"The interference is only going to increase if we can't restore coolant to the reactor." Ion sighed.

"We don't know how many of those things are in here! They need to know!" The kunoichi cried back.

Abel rested his hand on her shoulder and smiled that radiant smile of his, "They are our friends, capable and strong. They will be alright in the face of those things. They won't be if we don't find a way to stop the reactor."

Sakura swallowed hard and nodded.

* * *

><p>The Professor looked over the destroyed motherboard of the center tower. It was completely shredded, the circuitry spitting sparks. The control panel had managed to survive, but without new hardware, his only chance of rebooting the system was to have Tres jack into it and attempt to hack the firewalls. Without Kate's support, though, it would be difficult to manage.<p>

"Do you think you can break through the firewalls and attempt to manually restore control?"

"Unknown. My specifications were never intended to include hacking capabilities." Tres told him.

"Would you be willing to try?"

"Affirmative." The android responded as he pulled a small jack from the back of his head and slipped it into a port. His eyes went red. The screen in front of him flickered to life. Thousands of lines of code dropped down before the screen went white and began to pull up green lines of instruction. The Professor watched the android flip through them digitally. His selections were lightning fast. The screen blinked nine times in rapid succession before it came up with a confirmation for his security code.

"It appears I cannot override this command without a security key from a Level-Eight or higher priority personnel." Tres told him, jacking out of the system.

The Professor took a moment at the panel to try and pull up the tracking systems being used by the personnel aboard the mining colony hub. The last log had been five hours and thirty-nine minutes prior to their briefing by Kate aboard the _Aurora_. At that time, there was a heavy concentration of high priority personnel in the medical bay, located on deck two near the southeast mining equipment.

"We should proceed to the medical bay. If we hurry, we might be able to restore electricity and water to the reactor until Abel's unit can restore the coolant systems. It could buy us a few extra hours." The Professor said.

"There's just one problem with that," Leon commented as he stepped up to look out through the viewing port of the tower that overlooked their platform, "The tram system is disabled. We're not going to be able to use it to get there, which means we're on foot. That's almost half an hour there and another half an hour back. That doesn't include the time to find the damn cards."

The Professor checked the interface computer on his left forearm. According to the device, it was still transmitting data from the _Aurora_ and _Neferet, _despite the heavy interference that prevented him from reaching Kate directly. The device was synchronized to the data being read from the reactor. By that clock, they still had four hours. If they were fast, they could still give the secondary cell time to activate primary systems, which would automatically enable the coolant systems if Abel's team hadn't by then.

"The medical bay is still reading with life-support and artificial gravity. I believe it would be worth the time invested." He told him.

"Do you see the burns on that tram car?" Leon asked, "The bullet holes? The way it's misaligned with the track? Something big hit that car and the people inside panicked. Where the fuck are they now? The bodies? Something about this doesn't make sense."

"Agreed, however, our primary objective is to restore coolant to the reactor." Tres intoned.

"We'll proceed with caution." The Professor assured him.

Something wet slapped into the ground outside of the automatic doors. It was a noise that churned the Professor's stomach. Tres turned to it, his left eye shining with a bright red dot. According to his sensors, there was no heat or life signs on the other side of the door. There was, however, movement. Tres cocked his gun and tossed a manual at the door sensor. It sprang open and something sprang back at them.

Time was irrelevant for the android. It a matter of microseconds, he had determined the thing was a composition of necrotic flesh, newly dead tissue, stem cells, and an odd metallic mineral contaminant. It had once been human and now its lower body had been shredded and twisted into something of a tail ending in a sharp spur of vertebra. It's forearm bones had been modified into spikes that it dragged itself forward with. The spurs lining its back had once been ribs. The hinge of its jaw had been elongated and at the back of its throat he detected a sac that read abnormally hot. He swung his gun up as the thing launched itself at them, twisted hard to catch it, and threw it into the glass at his back. He pounced backwards and unleashed a barrage of plasma bullets. The first one hit, tearing off its blue eyes, and did nothing to stop it. The second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth plasma bolts bit into the torso of the thing. It again, did not cease its movements. The seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and subsequent thirty rounds reduced it to a gory smear of burned black filth.

The Professor, who dove to avoid the teeth of the thing, had only just hit the ground when it ceased to be. He scrambled to his feet, cursing, "What in the name of Albion-?"

Tres stooped to collect a sample of the gore into a vial. He plugged it tight with a stopper and dropped it into a self-sealing containment bag. Zipping the lines together released an enzyme that sealed the plastic shut, "Unknown. Requires further analysis. Pending mission objective completion."

"Let's move, quickly, before anything else decides to drop in for a visit." Leon growled as he snapped the gun from its clip holster into his hands.

* * *

><p>Sakura stopped suddenly at one of the panels along the deck. It appeared to still be working, but she couldn't read the language. It must have been some for of Empiric, but so many of the characters looked like the common tongue that Shinobi Nations had shared. She could have sworn one of them was the symbol for Konoha itself. The lovely curve of the leaf...<p>

"Sakura?"

She blinked and the images swam and suddenly she realized she had been looking at simple Empiric the entire time. She shook her head, wondering if perhaps she had lost more blood than she realized.

"Yes...just a thought...our suits are interfaced with one another. Even if we can't reach Kate, could we open a channel to the Professor through the hardwired system?" She asked.

"Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with this Lost Technology." Astha replied, "I was never trained in-"

Abel stepped forward; his nimble fingers danced across the digital keys and the screen popped with a warning that read: Authorization Requirement: Priority Access Class S Only. Abel tapped the button and the image that popped up was of two planets cradled by a crescent moon. The edging around it was done in nineteen different languages; most of them were dead since Abel's time aboard the Ark. More significant, though, was a symbol lost to most of history. It was a circular grid pattern with the silhouettes of the continents as they once were. Abel tried not to think of how much of that map he had destroyed in his dark days. Above it were the letters UN: S&RD. Seth herself had to have been the one to program the computer. There were only three people who understood that symbol...and the fourth lay dead in a catacomb in the Vatican.

"Access Request: Abel Nightroad. Red Mars Project. Security Clearance: Nightroad 66600976893. Override Command: Comm Uplink."

The computer beeped back a response: "Access Granted. Channel Opened."

"Locate: William Walter Wordsworth."

"Individual is not recognized." The computer chimed back.

He knew that meant it had been unable to update even with Kate's attempts to access the interface from the _Neferet_. There were other ways.

"Locate by Subcategory. Parameters: Human." Abel responded.

The computer brought up a gridded map that displayed two dots of color leaving the primary control tower and two dots of green nearing the back up computer systems. All four were reading as alive and moving.

"Locate by Subcategory. Parameters: Methuselah."

The map updated with two dots of blue at the control panel they were standing in front of.

"Locate by Subcategory. Parameters: Android."

A single dot of yellow appeared on the map near the control tower.

"Locate by Subcategory. Non-conditional. Parameters: Movement."

The map lit up with thousands of dots of red. Sakura blanched and Astha's eyes narrowed.

"Locate by Parameters: Crew Members with Active Vitals."

The computer lit up with less than a dozen lights of a teal color. Abel reached out and touched the screen to expand the image. Of the nine crew members reading back active vitals, five of them were in clear distress. Sakura watched one's heartbeat spike over three hundred and then collapse into a red line that didn't flicker back to life.

"We need to evacuate those people. Now!" Abel hissed.

He opened up a new window through the port and triggered it to open any available channel. Through the numerous screens that lit to life around them and down the hallways past where they could see, he sent a simple message: "This is Crusnik, reporting. The creatures in this facility are hostile. Do not attempt single fatal shots. Eliminate them with extreme prejudice through dismemberment. Repeat, you must dismember them. We are working on evacuating the remaining crew. They're coordinates are available on the screen. God be with you."

TBC


End file.
